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Chess Match at Ground Zero

The most obvious objection to the offer by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a Russian who is the head of the World Chess Federation, to buy the site of Cordoba House, a.k.a. Park51, the proposed downtown Islamic community center, for ten million dollars, is not legal, financial, or political (though there’s that, too). It is aesthetic. Here’s Ilyumzhinov’s idea: the center

will be built in the form of a chess figure, the king, of glass and concrete, which will decorate the city of New York.

“Decorate” our city with figurines—what are we, a wedding cake? And does Ilyumzhinov have a black king or white king in mind? The standard Staunton piece, or something more picturesque? Using one of those sets with crusader kings and knights might be a bad idea. Maybe we could get into a fight over whether it’s at all appropriate to erect the image of a king just blocks—blocks!— from the hallowed ground where the Sons of Liberty toppled a statue of King George III in 1776. (They melted it down for bullets.) But must we?

TPM’s Eric Lach points out that Ilyumzhinov has said that he was kidnapped by aliens. Perhaps, if the giant chess king is somehow built, future generations will suggest an extraterrestrial influence to explain what is otherwise baffling—like with Easter Island. It’s not as if there’s a rational explanation for the way plans for a community center in the middle of a community that includes Muslims has been received.

I’m all for Hendrik Hertzberg’s proposal that the so-called Ground Zero mosque should be moved—to Ground Zero. Otherwise, the present site seems just fine. And there are undoubtedly better ways for the World Chess Federation to use its money than paying over-market prices to put up an ugly building.

In one sense, though, a chess motif might be appropriate: the game is thought to have originated somewhere in India, and one of the key routes for its introduction into Europe was Moorish Spain—which had, as one of its cosmopolitan centers, the city of Cordoba.

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.